70 years on, wartime rifts still run deep

Published on Tuesday 1 September 2009 22:07

AROUND dawn, as the morning light pushed the darkness away from the city of Gdansk, a company of Polish sailors stood at attention as a trumpet call rang out. At 4:45am, 70 years to the minute after the first shots of the Second World War were fired, Poland's prime minister and president bowed their heads in remembrance.

In a day of high emotion for Poland, heads of state and dignitaries from around the world gathered at Westerplatte, the tiny peninsula overlooking Gdansk's harbour where battle first commenced, to remember the start of a conflict that would engulf the world and claim millions of lives.

German chancellor Angela Merkel, the prime ministers of Italy and France, and Britain's Foreign secretary, David Miliband, were among other guests attending the commemorative event.

US president Barack Obama sent a high-level delegation with a message praising Poland's wartime struggle for freedom.

But for all the emotion, the solemn events were overshadowed by a bitter and long-running argument between Russia and Poland over wartime guilt and history.

Using the dawn ceremony as a platform to attack what Poland considers as Russia's failure to atone for its signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in August 1939 – an act that Poles believe triggered the war and the subsequent crimes that the Stalinist regime committed against Poland – president Lech Kaczynski pulled few punches.

Describing the pact as "a stab in the back", he went on to compare the 1940 Katyn massacre, in which 22,000 Polish officers, captured by the Soviet Union after it invaded and annexed eastern Poland in September 1939, with the Holocaust.

"They were on vastly different scales, but what is the comparison between the Holocaust and Katyn? Jews died because they were Jews. Polish officers were killed because they were Polish officers," he said.

For decades, Moscow blamed the deaths on the Nazis, but after the fall of the Soviet Union it acknowledged they had been shot on Stalin's orders.

Poland had hoped that Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister and a guest of honour at the events in Gdansk, would offer an apology for the behaviour of the Soviet Union signing the pact. But, while stressing the need for good relations with Poland and avoiding any provocative comments, Mr Putin echoed a condemnation of the pact he made in a Polish newspaper on Monday, and also took a swipe at the policies of the western powers.

"All attempts to appease the Nazis between 1934 and 1939, through various agreements and pacts, were morally unacceptable and politically senseless, harmful and dangerous," Mr Putin said. "We must admit these mistakes. Our country has done this. The Russian parliament has condemned the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. We have a right to expect this from other countries that also agreed deals with the Nazis."

Mr Putin cited efforts by Britain and France to appease Hitler in 1938, resulting in their acceptance of the destruction of Czechoslovakia, as well as Poland's own seizure of a strip of Czech territory shortly before it, too, faced German invasion. Putin also criticised what Russia calls "the falsification of history".

"We need to rid society of the plague of xenophobia, racial hatred, mutual distrust built on the cynical distortion or crude falsification of history," he said. "I am convinced that only in this way will we be able to turn the page on the Second World War for a peaceful future for our children."

Russians remain deeply proud of their country's victory over Hitler in 1945, in what they call the "Great Patriotic War". A Russian government campaign against "falsification" has led to disquiet in Poland and other states in Russia's traditional sphere of influence that Moscow is seeking to impose its version of history and will not tolerate any deviation from the state line.

These concerns were fuelled in the days leading up to 1 September, when Poland was on the receiving end of a string of allegations over its behaviour in the inter-war years, and how it may have sided with Nazi Germany. The protracted argument between the two countries scuppered hopes that the anniversary could foster a spirit of reconciliation between Warsaw and Moscow, so that relations could match those that Poland now has with Germany.

By contrast, in her speech at Westerplatte, Ms Merkel accepted her country's tainted past.

"Seventy years ago today the German invasion of Poland opened up the most tragic chapter in European history," she said. "The war unleashed by Germany resulted in immeasurable suffering to many peoples – years of deprivation of rights, of humiliation and destruction."

Poland lost about a fifth of its population, including the vast majority of its three million Jewish citizens, as well as a fifth of its territory during the Second World War.

After the war, the country remained under Soviet domination until 1989.

Some 27 million Soviet citizens perished in the war after Hitler reneged on his pact with Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.

"I commemorate the 60 million people who lost their lives because of this war unleashed by Germany," Ms Merkel said.

"We know we cannot change the atrocities of the Second World War," she added. "The scars will remain visible. But it is our task to shape the future in the consciousness of our perpetual responsibility."

Polish garrison picked as target for the first shells of Second World War

IT BECAME a symbol of Polish defiance against overwhelming odds, and an inspiration to the rest of Poland's army engaged in desperate and bloody fighting against the might of Hitler's ultimately triumphant forces.

The 180-strong Polish garrison at Westerplatte, a tiny peninsula overlooking the entrance to the harbour of the Free City of Danzig, now Gdansk, was on the receiving end of the first shots of the Second World War.

At 4:45am on 1 September, 1939, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein – on a "friendly visit" to Danzig – trained its sights on the vulnerable outpost and opened fire.

Expecting an easy victory German soldiers and marines launched a land attack on the Polish base.

But they were unaware that Major Henryk Sucharski, the Polish commander, had strengthened the defences, creating killing fields with inter-locking fields of fire.

Caught in an unexpected storm of machine-gun and mortar fire, and suffering heavy casualties, the Germans beat a hasty retreat.

German forces then launched a furious assault on the small garrison. Along with big naval guns, Wehrmacht commanders called up artillery and dive bombers in an attempt to blast Westerplatte's fortifications and its defenders into oblivion.

The plan almost worked. On day three a 500lb bomb struck, killing eight defenders and leaving Major Sucharski shell shocked.

On the point of nervous collapse he contemplated surrender, but was faced down by his fellow officers who remained determined to continue the fight.

It was only on the seventh day that the depleted garrison, low on ammunition, men, water and medicine surrendered.

The Germans meanwhile. continued their blitzkrieg into central Poland, and the Red Army invaded from Russia on 17 September.

The last operational unit of the Polish Army surrendered on 6 October.